


8reakthrough

by sn34k1 (dastardlymeme)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcholism, Humanstuck, Implied Relationships, Multi, Substance Abuse, VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU KNOW IT'S HUMANSTUCK, at least i'll PROBABLY change pov a lot btw, constantly changing pov, guarantees, i am a professional writer i swear, i rly like writing from lots of character's perspectives srry, implied eating disorders, it'll prolly get worse, jfc my tags are a mess, mainly vriskat tbh, no gurantees lmao, no it's not erivris don't let chapter one fool you, prolly even have mentions of ocs but dw there won't be many, rly messed up vriska sorry, that was the word i was looking for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 19:39:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2240991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dastardlymeme/pseuds/sn34k1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tangible hurt is better than any kind of hurt in your heart or your head. A tangible love is better than no one in your bed. <br/>Vriska can't sleep, can't think. Everything is a haze until something clicks. She's not sure what and she's not sure how but she is sure that something's different. Something is very, very different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	8reakthrough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mistakes have been made and prices paid but she still can't figure out what this is, where she's going, why this is happening. She has all the answers, though, she just won't believe them. Seeing is believing but believing is the enemy.  
> Her bleeding thoughts, a bruised ego and recently emptied stomach do not mix well.

Her day starts in the middle of the night. She wakes to the sound of her alarm clock, groans and fumbles in the darkness to turn it off, hand hitting empty air several times before she realises it’s not her alarm clock she’s reaching for, but rather Eridan’s, set for him to get up and go to work at his father’s docks. Vriska’s nauseated. She’s almost spent the entire night here. Eridan is on the other side of the bed, visible in the blackened room but only barely. Just as pale as she is, freckles dotting his arms and shoulders (though she can’t see his face yet; it’s pressed against his pillow), stretching down his back and just along the nape of his neck. Taking his hair into account too, his glasses, height and build and they look like twins. Like siblings. It’s like being with the male version of herself, except she’d have better hair, Vriska thinks.

 

But she’s everything Eridan is, intensified. His eyes are blue, but hers are bluer. His hair is red but hers is redder. His skin is pale but hers is paler. He’s gorgeous but she’s a drop dead knock out. At least, she was.

She climbs out of his plush bed, surely bought with Daddy’s money and not his own, pads out of his room, clothes in hand. Vriska pulls on her underwear, slips on her pants, shirt and glasses. The redhead makes her way back to his room, taking some money from his wallet for a cab, and some just because he shouldn’t have been stupid enough to trust her.

 

Vriska calls a cab from his living room, throat burning, from alcohol and last night’s (technically it was last night) events. She barely remembers, which makes things easier. It’s not the first time this has happened. It’s nearly become a regular occurrence, her little activities with Ampora. It could be worse, Vriska thinks, much worse. She could have to keep her aggressions and desires pent up, or spent on random strangers who have no idea what they’re getting into.

Which of course couldn’t possibly be in anyone’s best interests, couldn’t be healthy.

Vriska doesn’t say goodbye or even so much as leave a note or text for him to wake up to, because that’s not how their relationship is, not the kind of person Vriska is either. He’ll wake up and check his wallet, shake his head at the missing money and complain for a bit about his bitch of a fuckbuddy (though it wasn’t to say their relationship didn’t have a significant amount of complexity because damn if it didn’t. It was hard enough for them to understand let alone for others if they hadn’t been involved themselves). Then he’ll get up and check the rest of his apartment to see what else she nicked, even if half the time Vriska leaves more than she takes. Which seems to be the same formula they follow with sex, too, with Eridan taking taking taking and Vriska taking but not taking as much as he can.

 

Because Eridan can leech and while Vriska takes she doesn’t continuously feed from him. Takes what she needs and makes herself scarce because she never even wanted this. Never wanted this dependency on their relationship, whatever the fuck it was. It was kind of like dating, except you date someone because you like them, not because you despise yet need them. What could you even call it? Enemies with benefits? Maybe? It’s complicated, she’ll say to him, if he ever asks what they hell they are. Though he doesn’t do that anymore, because he can never get a straight damn answer outta the girl.

But Eridan doesn’t know if he really wants a straight answer, now, because a straight answer means Vriska’s getting serious. And Vriska’s dangerous when she’s serious. She’s dangerous enough now. He wakes up most mornings, after a night spent in the company of Serket, with bruises and bites and a sickening sense of satisfaction because after years of high school, years of being told he’d never get a girl, he got _Serket_. The girl no one could get.

Though he still doesn’t really have her. Still doesn’t know if he really wants her. Doesn’t want her the way he wanted Feferi, or Nepeta, or, fuck, even Karkat. Doesn’t want her in that way, couldn’t handle her like that. Eridan is addicted to Vriska at her worst, terrified of her at her best. That’s how it is, he guesses. He’s done questioning it. Vriska never questions it in the first place. It’s not like she really sticks around long enough afterwards for either of them to question their relationship, anyways. And asking at any point before or days after is awkward, something they avoid these days.

 

Vriska sits in the backseat of the cab, head in her hands as waves of nausea continuously wash over her, wishes she’d never touched the tequila last night. Ugh. What the hell was she thinking? She flops back, waiting for the driver to reach Hive Street, shielding her eyes from the city lights that streak past as they speed through the near empty streets. She can’t get home soon enough, honestly. The second the driver pulls to a stop, Vriska thrusts the twenty she’d taken from Eridan and bails, telling him to keep the change even though she’s actually underpaid the poor guy. He doesn’t say anything though, pities her instead when she stops to hurl in the bushes. Salvatore, the cab driver, just drives off and shakes his head, regretting his decision to work nights.

 

She wipes her mouth before fumbling around in her pocket for a mint, not enjoying the pleasant burn as much as she usually does, though that might be because she’s hung-over and her mouth’s burning enough already. Vriska pulls the door to her apartment complex and doesn’t attempt to hide her irritation when it doesn’t give, thinking it’s locked and cursing the doorman. And then she remembers it’s a push door, not a pull, and she pushes it open, stumbling inside and squinting in the bright lights of the lobby, muttering angrily under her breath. She takes the elevator to her floor and hurries down the hallway to number 128, her apartment and her own personal hell on earth.

 

Pale fingers clasp the doorknob, hurriedly turning it because she knows she left it unlocked last night; she’d never even intended on leaving her apartment in the first place. Though that doesn’t matter now. Vriska doesn’t even care if she’s been robbed so long as the toilet, bed and shower are still there. The rest she’d willingly part with. Hell, she’d even give up her apartment if she could scrape up enough cash to get a new one. After all, too much had been seen and done here, Vriska had allowed herself to get involved and of course that ended fucking terribly. She tears off her clothes and kicks her shoes across the room, carefully sets her glasses down on the nightstand beside her bed. Vriska almost collapses, and in minutes she’s slipping into a deep but not at all restful slumber. She can’t sleep at home, sleeps like a baby at Eridan’s, but Vriska can’t stay anywhere else. Can’t stay here either, come to think of it. But she’s got nowhere else to go, not in her mind.

 

“God I hate him.” Vriska whispers, on the brink of unconsciousness. But she’s not talking about Eridan, no; she’s talking about a special kind of hatred directed at a special kind of person. The kind of hatred you can only have for someone you once loved. And Vriska fucking knows that’s exactly what the problem is; she just won’t grow up and face it. How do you face that kind of thing?

 

 

***

       

 

Her day starts again at the end of one she’s missed. It’s 4 p.m. and Vriska looks like death, she doesn’t need a mirror to see it, though. She takes the glass of water from her nightstand, the glass that’s been there for almost three nights because she’s barely been near her bed the past three days anyways. Whenever she can get away from this place, she does. Not only is it boring, but it reeks of mistakes and failure, of disappointment and things Vriska just can’t pin. It is, truly, her own personal hell.

 

And it’s exactly why Vriska doesn’t believe there’s a God, exactly why she doesn’t believe in a fictionalised Hell, because she has her own hell and it’s as real as the ache in her chest from abusing herself and abusing what she’d had.

 

And now Tavros is paralysed and Terezi is legally blind and Aradia is _dead_ and Vriska is a fucking bitch and she damn well knows it, for a fact too. There’s no use in moping about it, she thinks to herself, but she’ll mope anyways, downing the entire glass of water before setting it down, probably a little harder than she needed to. She sits up, rubs her eyes furiously before getting out of bed and staggering into the tiny bathroom. Vriska takes her place in the shower, hunched over and retching as the cold water cascades over her alabaster toned skin, spilling around the bony ridges of her spine and downwards. Vriska hugs herself, freckled arms wrapped around a thin torso, covering the ladder of her ribs that had never been visible before. She’s not sick, she tells herself, she’s under control. Vriska refuses to acknowledge she’s got problems that have nothing to do with him. She doesn’t know how to cope with not being able to blame anyone. Though truthfully she’s not even completely at fault for these issues anyhow, not completely at fault for whatever disorders she has.

 

Again she empties the contents of her stomach, and it burns even more this time because it’s basically just pure acid at this point, no food to chuck up, only water, alcohol and regret. Vriska isn’t even entirely sure whether this is because she has to throw up or if it’s because she needs to. There’s a difference.

 

It swirls down the drain, around her feet and triggers more because _ugh it’s_ on _her_. Vriska wipes her mouth and turns around, getting sprayed in the face in the process but being well past the point of caring. She just wants this filthy feeling to go away, wants either more alcohol or more of Eridan or, God forbid, more of John. Not that she can really have any of those anyways. She’d consider drugs, for the high, but the crash that comes afterwards isn’t entirely worth it. Sure, she could just stay high, but Vriska isn’t made of money and her mother sure as shit ain’t gonna fund her habit if she ever did develop one. Marquise barely gives Vriska enough money for college and bare necessities.

 

And yes, she does still attend college, barely.

 

Vriska nearly passes out in the shower, dehydrated and nauseous and just _hating_ him. Hating herself, too. It takes a moment for her to get her bearings once more, and then she’s standing in the shower, swaying from side to side just so, eyes unfocused. The water turns cold, after a few seconds. She’s forgotten to pay the bills again. She can’t _afford_ to pay the bills again. Time to get a job, if only she could hold one down.

 

It’s a blur, when she steps out of the shower. Vriska feels around for the glasses she hadn’t carried into the bathroom with her, reaches out for the frames she hates because clarity is now her enemy. But while she hates clarity Vriska also hates stubbing her toe on the nightstand like she does every single time she walks around the house without her glasses. Skin white but still dirty, hair soaked and matted. Her (dyed) red hair, red hair that had once been thick and luscious when she’d actually taken care of it, hangs around her shoulders in limp strips of strands knotted around each other, for support and for pure fucking inconvenience to her. Vriska falls into bed. The next morning, she wakes up at normal human hours. The next morning, Vriska calls Terezi.

***

“You have reached the message bank of TEREZI PYROPE! Leave a message after the beep, heh!”

 

Within two seconds of Vriska dialling her number, the call is rejected and Vriska only gets to hear the falsely chirpy voice Terezi puts on for complete strangers. What she _wants_ to hear is Terezi Pyrope calling her every name under the sun, cursing her out for merely existing. Anything but telling her to leave a message after the goddamn fucking beep. Anything but this crushing silence that really shouldn’t be as bad as it is now. It’s been six months. Six months and here she is.

 

“Come _on_ Terezi! You can’t ignore me forever!” Vriska leaves a message after the beep. Like she always does. And Vriska knows Terezi checks them. The ginger couldn’t bear to leave it be just like that. Vriska knows that much for sure. As soon as that’s said and done, Vriska slips her phone into her jean pocket and ties her hair up into a fiercely messy knot atop her head. There’s not much to do today, but she just needs to get out of the fucking house. Her laces are tucked into her canvas sneakers, the filthy red canvas fabric in dire need of a good scrub. Vriska doesn’t tie her laces anymore; it hurts too much to bend over for extended periods of time. Hell, it hurts to breathe these days.

 

Terezi Pyrope, Tavros Nitram, Aradia Megido and John Egbert were four of only five people Vriska had remained in contact with after high-school. One is blind, one is paralysed, one is dead and one hates her guts. Vriska hates herself more. 

 

Three steps away from the mirror, two steps back to grab her satchel, five steps out the door and three down the hallway before she has to go back because she’s forgotten her prescription sunglasses and it’s way too fucking hot to go anywhere without them. And then Vriska’s gone, heading through hallways and waiting impatiently in elevators and rushing out doors into the streets she knows like the back of her hand and she wishes she could forget it all. Because every single time she leaves the apartment complex, Vriska has to step onto the landing, has to feel her way along the banister, has to skip the last step because that’s where John first kissed her. And that’s where he stepped for the last time before making a swift and undignified exit from her painfully dramatic life. Since when did she become the star of an indie flick about heartbreak? Vriska’s going to kill the director, she swears.

 

It doesn’t take long for Vriska to get to the bus station, and it takes even less time for the bus to arrive. She boards, sits down, and waits. Vriska absorbs herself in a game on her phone so she doesn’t have to pay attention to her surroundings. This is a pity, because if only she opened her fucking eyes she’d see it. See him, and no not him as in John, him as in a brand new contender. Well, not _new._ But Vriska doesn’t look up from her phone, doesn’t open her figurative eyes. Doesn’t see him. He sees her, of course. But he doesn’t recognise her, even though Vriska had the kind of face that had been totally unforgettable. Wasn’t as though she was looking up at him, but, wasn’t as though he could see her face, see the mess she’d become after high-school, the mess she’d become after that “stupid fucker”.

 

However John wasn’t entirely to blame for Vriska’s downward spiral. In fact, it was mostly Vriska’s own doing that in the end, brought her undone. Truthfully John had hated her, but that hate had dissipated into mere dislike and over the course of the following months it had become pity. Truthfully, John would probably make time for her again, if only her pride hadn’t gotten in the way, if only life would stop fucking getting in the way.

 

But the point is that John isn’t to blame; Vriska’s big mouth and bad choices are to blame. You can’t hold it against John for how he took it. Maybe how he handled it, but not how he took it.

 

Today is Monday. Today is Medsday. Medsday is both Vriska’s favourite and least favourite day of the week, because it’s both the day that builds her up _and_ the day that crushes her the most. Meds are Vriska’s avenging angel; except they’re exacting their vengeance against _her_.

 

Marquise does fund this habit, because the pills Vriska takes are prescription. Because the pills Vriska takes keep her from losing it completely. Marquise is trying desperately to keep her daughter between the lines as best she can, but she can’t do very much; it is Vriska’s life. And Vriska would raise hell if Marquise tried to take over. Her life’s in shambles but it is, at heart, _her_ life. And hers alone.

 

All Vriska can do now is open her eyes, and maybe she’ll see that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS MOSTLY A VENT WORK  
> I MAY NOT UPDATE FREQUENTLY (OR AT ALL)   
> But any feedback would be appreciated anyways please and thank you.


End file.
